Private Link Networks – how to build them properly and win big time

SEO is getting harder and harder these days, with Google penalizing or outright banning techniques that were previously accepted (for a good reason, I would say) – one must be careful. This post covers private link networks and how to stay under Google’s radar.

The basic rules of SEO are mostly the same – create great content, make sure your website is Google-friendly (and Bing will follow), and get as many high quality links as possible.

The bag of tricks to get backlinks might have been exhausted and a lot smaller than few years before.

Building private link networks, if done correctly, is still something that can boost your site’s rankings.

What is a Private Link Network?

It is a group of blogs that are owned by the same entity. A blog network can either be a group of loosely connected blogs. Or a group of blogs that are owned by the same company.

The purpose of private link networks are usually to promote the other blogs in the same network. Therefore, it increases the search engine rankings.

Private link networks are a powerful, albeit hard way of staying ahead in SEO

First of all, let’s define what I mean by “private link networks”.

You may have already heard the term and most of the time, it’s portrayed in a negative light. That’s understandable because there are many networks out there comprised of nothing but blogs that are filled with auto-generated content and paid links, which do more harm than good both to their owners and the link buyers.

By link network I mean a large number of blogs, forums, accounts on various websites and social media account networks that are owned and used exclusively by you (no link sales!).

All of these web properties can be used for SEO, both to increase the ranking of existing pages and blogs, and to quickly get a new website off the ground – which, as you know, is an extremely useful ability in the online world.

A link network includes multiple different web properties

Traditionally, a private link network would only contain blogs, since they were the only viable source of links back in the day. However, with the advance of social media and the increase in the value of the links coming from them, a modern backlink network can and should be made up of several different web properties:

Basically any other places where you have the ability to create links.

Needless to say, all of these accounts should be properly maintained and kept active, either manually, via outsourcing or via automation.

Social media accounts in particular don’t require much maintenance since you can buy the followers/likes and the content is mostly simple (you can even repeat what others say), but forum posts and blogs will require more attention and work. They will also be the most important part of your network because of their flexibility.

Link networks allow you to control your backlinks to an unprecedented degree

The biggest advantage of having your very own backlink network is the near absolute control over the backlinks. No longer you will have to guess:

when or if you’ll get any links,

what their anchor text or quality will be,

You can decide that when you create them yourself!

You can also edit or remove the links at any time, which can be very important with all of the Google algorithm updates.

Most of the time, the web properties in the backlink network should be used as standalone and not intersect, with links being posted only when they’re required.

Multiple accounts on social networks can also allow you to get content viral. In fact, this is exactly how those services offering to get your post to the top of Reddit, Slashdot, Digg, Hacker News and other websites work.

You can post a viral-worthy article. Then use ~100 accounts via proxies or VPN to slowly upvote it to the top. Once it gets a certain amount of votes, it is almost guaranteed that the regular users will start upvoting it as well.

I’ve noticed it countless times before on the above mentioned websites, reposts are as frequent as original submissions!

Then it’s up to you to decide what to do with the traffic.

Blogs in the network can be standalone income sources

The blogs (and forum signatures, for that matter) in your private link network can also be used as standalone lead generators or money makers . As I said, it’s the best if they live their own life. Instead of being used exclusively for backlinks, you can and should expand them as much as possible. Add monetization options and use them to create a separate income stream. These sites will be very useful if any of your main websites fails for any reason.

With all the traffic on site you can make money from affiliate links. Moreover, use forum signatures from selling niche products. These properties can practically pay for themselves.

There is more, with Fiverr, Amazon MTurk, Microworkers and other similar websites, you can get quality content for all your properties paying close to 0$.

An example of a tiered private link network being used to get rankings for a main website

As an example, here’s how you might use a private link network to get backlinks for a new website that will be the main property.

The main site will be used to build a long term business and a brand.

In this case, you would not want any bad backlinks, and your private link network guarantees high quality links. Assuming you built it correctly, without frequent interlinking between the accounts/blogs, quality content and no link sales to bad websites.

– Tier 1.

The first tier will be your main website, which should of course have at least several high quality articles posted on it and be fully optimized for search engines (on-site SEO wise).

– Tier 2.

The second tier will include your network’s blogs and forum accounts.

You should create a few posts related to the topic of your main website. Then create backlinks to the main website with the desired anchor text.

If the blogs and forum posts aren’t directly related to the main website’s niche, you can always create a personal post with a story where you would be able to include your desired backlinks without them looking out of place.

The same thing goes for the forum posts/threads.

– Tier 3.

The third tier will include your social media accounts, which will link to the posts you just made on your Tier 2 properties. This will increase the ranking of those posts, which in turn will increase the link power to the main website.

You can also create a few links back to the main website. Note: They should be rare and never look out of place. You can do it as a simple mention in a comment, for example.

– Tier 4.

The fourth and last tier will include any guest posts that you can do and your author accounts on other blogs. They should link to your Tier 2 blogs. But NOT to the posts that link to the main website – only to any other articles on the blog.

These are mostly to increase the Tier 2 blogs rankings and help the overall rankings of the whole network.

This is a very simplified method, but it’s been used countless times before and it still works marvelously well.

You can find many complicated link methods online, though you should be careful not to overdo it. Too many backlinks or too much interlinking and some of your properties may be noticed by Google’s filters.

It takes time to build proper private link networks, but it’s a worthy investment

A private link network can definitely pay off. Although it’s pretty hard to build one right. It requires lots of time at the very least. As well as a significant money investment if you want to get the best and largest network possible.

Private, hidden private link networks will always work – there are many people online who do it successfully.

The key is to keep the network truly private. That means no link sales, and no talking about your network or showing it off anywhere.

It makes logical sense – if no one knows about it, that’s why they are called private link networks.

If no one knows about your private blog network and the properties unrelated. There is no way of knowing that the network is owned by one person.

The problem starts when people wanna brag about their success and just can’t keep quite.